Hasta La Gadget!

It looks like all the big companies now have got an 8 megapixel camera in their smartphones, and although I’ve had one for almost a year on my iPhone, I am somewhat disappointed that no one has released a smartphone with a better camera, except that PureView craziness Nokia released. Nevertheless, HTC comes right back at Nokia with their own brightly-colored Windows 8 Phone, complete with 8MP camera.

Ever since HTC admitted that they had way too many phones and that most of them were too big, I had to reconsider my opinion of them. The HTC 8X is the company’s new signature handset, with a 4.3-inch HD LCD screen (720 × 1280), with a Gorilla Glass 2 covering, Beats Audio for be a better headphone experience, a 2.1 MP front facing camera and a 8MP backside-illuminated camera.

The phone has full quad-band support for GSM/GPRS/EDGE and WSPA/WCDMA networks, as well as 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi. It’s also got built-in GPS, compass, motion sensors, and is NFC capable. There’s even a dedicated headphone amp, which is kind of an interesting feature. The 1,800 mAh battery isn’t bad, but I would have liked something bigger, given what Samsung puts in their phones these days.

Under the hood, the HTC 8X runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5GHz dual core processor with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. It will be available this November in blue, black, red and yellow.

[via Uncrate]

It’s been quite a month for leaks and the announcement of new cameras by various manufacturers. This week, a pair of new Olympus interchangeable lens compact cameras leaked as well. A few scant details of the cameras were also offered along with the leaked photos.

The black camera you see is said to be called the E-PL5, with the silver camera called the E-PM2. As you can clearly tell, both offer interchangeable lenses and look very similar. At first glance you could almost mistake them as two different colors of the same camera. However there are slight differences, such as the black camera having a knurled knob on the top, likely a manual control of some sort.

Rumor has it that both cameras will use the same sensor as found in the Olympus E-M5. The cameras also should have the same image processing engine called TruePic VI. Both of the cameras are also said to have touch screens on the back. The silver camera is said to sell for €399 (~$523 USD) with the black camera going for €599 (~$785 USD). Both prices reportedly include 14-42 mm kit lenses. Expect more details in the coming weeks.

[via 43rumors]

Last week, we came across a leaked image of Sony’s purported new high-end, full-frame camera, the Cyber-shot RX1. Well, Sony has confirmed the launch of the new camera, and it’s quite an impressive (if expensive) little bit of digital imaging technology.

Well it turns out that everything we knew about the camera at the time was correct, and now we have complete details and specs in hand from Sony themselves. Priced at $2799.99(USD), the RX1 is clearly targeted at serious digital photophiles. The palm-sized digicam offers a full-frame 35mm Exmor CMOS sensor, capturing still images at 24.3 megapixels. It can store images in full 14-bit RAW mode, and offers complete manual control. ISO range is rated from 100-25600, and it looks like it can capture awesome images in low light.

Perhaps the most controversial feature of the RX1 is its fixed lens. It’s got an f/2.0 Carl Zeiss Sonnar T lens with 9 aperture blades, and has a macro mode for amazing up-close images. A high-speed auto-focus system can get images in focus in as little as 0.13 seconds.

In addition to still image capture, the RX1 can shoot full 1920×1080 video in 60p, 50p or 24p frame rates, stored in AVCHD format. It also supports direct MP4 capture, but only at 1440×1080 at 30 or 25 fps. Here’s some sample footage from the RX1, but for some odd reason, they only uploaded it to YouTube in 720p resolution. It still looks great, but I’d like to see some full 1080/60p or 1080/24p footage.

The camera also has a built-in pop-up flash, and a hot-shoe for accessories like a full-size flash or external viewfinder. On the back is a 3″ LCD screen with a super-sharp 1.2 million pixel resolution, and optimized for daylight viewing. It’s also got a handy feature – a digital level – so you can make sure you’re getting perfectly level shots when you set up your tripod. In addition to the full manual control, the RX1 offers Intelligent Auto mode, SteadyShot image stabilization, face detection, auto HDR, effects and sweep panorama modes. Though if you’re resorting to such features, you’re probably not the target audience for this high-end camera.

The Cyber-shot RX1 will be released on or about 12/19/2012, and you can pre-order the camera over at the Sony Store now.

Have you got a cup? And an iPhone? Then all you need to take decent product panoramas is the CupChair app. It’s definitely an interesting combination of cleverness and usefulness.

RotaryView’s CupChair is a way to make 360° panoramic views of stuff that you want to sell, or just things that you want to scan. You just place your iPhone into a cup or mug, point it at the object you want to create a 360 degree shot of. Then, the app does the rest. You just have to hand-rotate your object and let the app take the photos.

The app generates the 360° images automatically, and provides you with an embed code, which doesn’t yet work with Etsy for some reason, which is too bad since that’d be the perfect venue for such images. You’ll also need to purchase a plan from RotaryView to host your 360° images. It starts at $4.99 per month up to $49 per month or $499 per year, depending on the number of products you’re displaying at a time.

[via The Next Web]

Styluses aren’t just for Samsung devices, there are plenty available for iPads and iPhones. While most of them are pretty crappy, the most interesting are the ones that can connect to your iPad via Bluetooth and convey pressure sensitive information.

Ten One Design’s Pogo Connect will start shipping this October. You’ll get months of battery life from a single AAA battery, and thanks to Bluetooth 4.0, there’s no need to turn it off. It uses solid state pressure sensing, offering hundreds of levels of sensitivity with no moving parts. Unfortunately, the stylus still has to have a relatively fat 7mm tip in order to work with the iPad’s capacitive screen.

If you don’t have the new iPad, there will be an app available that will allow you to make the Pogo Connect work with the iPad 1 and 2 as well – but this requires access to an iPhone 4S (or the upcoming new iPhone 5) to act as a Bluetooth 4.0 bridge. The Connect relies on third-party app makers to build support for it, as Apple doesn’t offer any system-level protocol for dealing with pressure sensitivity over Bluetooth. However, there are already a number of apps, including Paper, Procreate and Sketchbook Pro, which will be compatible with it.

The stylus retails for $79.95(USD), and if you’re one of the first 2,000 pre-orders, then you’ll get custom laser engraving on the pen as well.

[via TechCrunch]